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Manhattan in A Shirt and Tie
Manhattan in A Shirt and Tie by Christopher J. Bradley Dedicated to Ricky Lee Tammy Sharpe The Impulse Foot Soldiers Jim M and Jim A The New Culture Industry Manipulators Anyone Who Has Ever Had a Sales Crisis The Venture Capitalists of Advent All of my friends at Electronic Data Systems and The Social Reforming Activists of The University at Buffalo. Inspired by the Music Video for "Sleep Now in the Fire" by Rage Against the Machine broadcast on Much Music on Friday April 14 2000 At Sometime Around 4 PM. Transmission Coding Header: Warning - Electronic Letter Bombs not delivered by Federal Express may contain Action Provoking Patriotic Imagery. Do not read this poem partially. As proscribed by the laws of The United States of America: :Parental Advisory ----- :Explicit Content :that May Contain :Statements of Fact. ----- Transmission Coding Footer: The beginning is always a good place to start. Manhattan in a Shirt and Tie Back Up Behind countless vehicles of all sorts Old new auctioned and in between The monoxide drifted through clouded girders Above the blue-green current below Everyone behind the wheel slowly pushing forward toward the four dollar toll cages at the end of the George Washington A bicyclist passes wearing headphones And I realize that there is music Among the talking in the Shadow Z-100 Boosts SWV with a hint of Michael Jackson To the ears of the four of us Ready to sell Kansas and Boston From Black Bags loaded into the trunk in Jersey We might have been selling poppies Silver backed disks in sealed plastic I was going to work the streets with an Italian named Joe An ex Air Force mechanic named Steve A hispanic account manager named Jose And a moustached black man named Carl We all knew that we were going to do it "My Way" if things didn't work out and we were going to come home with money. The day shift was enough for a thousand words. We parked at Six A.M. And hit the bars and pornography houses on fourty second street with a furious vengeance that could only be characterized as a kind of anger for gross earning We enticed the Arab and ex-bounty hunter vendors and morning barkeeps to pick up the Greatest Hits of Billy Joel and Try on for size a digitally remastered Jefferson Airplane ticket We had Sinatra and Benettar And if you bothered to dig We had some Chris Cross to make you Jump The clerks ate up our numbing brain candy Especially when we featured "Dust in the Wind" for them. Everybody had a few nickels to drop And we were there to pick them up Like aluminum scavengers with Glad twist tie kitchen bags. As I walked with the canvas slung across my shoulders I saw huge billboards along the walks Women dressed in underwear Poked inviting fingers out at me Supermodels I'd never seen on television. People stood behind walls of plexi-glass waiting for busses. At first I was nervous about going up into buildings but that changed as the morning progressed. I walked through a bread line And watched a Mercedes and a Jaguar glide by among the Yellow Taxis. On the short steps of a building Out near the Parking Lot Somewhere around 9th A girl collecting change in a pencil can asked to see what I had to sell I showed her some Mozart when she said she wanted it Classical style She paid with a fifty. It was a new North America for me Everything was for sale You could feel it even if you couldn't see it. I could smell the moisture evaporating off the concrete As the legions of stock attired swindlers in sharkskin wingtips Marched uniformly down Wall With a lust for the shifting numbers Of the never halting ticker They stopped for no one And hurled change At the scraggled legless veteran Buried under the water stained wrinkled sheets of last weeks Journal I stayed away from that strip It was erie Like something you'd expect to see in Tokyo But the pale angle shouldered business suited traders Looked like Gillete Sensor sponsors with only one exception They had wide lowered eyes. I let myself imagine that their Rolexes cost as much as thourougbreads worthy of the Triple crown. In front of a New York pizza shop in the grid I bought a hip fanny pack from an Armenian. I started using it for convenience. Michelle had shown me one When we were in Physics class together A year earlier in nineteen ninety two. By noon I was sweating So I stepped into a store with no air conditioning. They sold everything from Canned soup to Wisk to Boones and Bottle Openers There was an Asian College girl behind the counter I bought a pack of cigarettes and an Arizona Green Tea. I tried to strike up a conversation without selling anything And she ended up taking 90215 and the Eagles with her before we went our seperate ways and I became an "Owner of a Lonely Heart." Next I found myself on Fifth Avenue standing across the street from a woman with long soft shiny brunette hair. She was wearing a long white Custom designed dress. It looked like the ones the models walked the runway in on CNN Fashion Extra. I can't pretend to be an expert on clothing But I was certain that the flowing transparent garment Cost far more than my parents' humble estate of residence Off a side street in DeVeaux. She was walking five identically trimmed brown dogs that stood only About two feet from the ground. I won't lie and claim that they were terriers. I will only say that they looked like What I imagined at the time a well groomed high pedigree Terrier might be. The five of them all had long strands Of thin hair that shined like gold In the summer sunshine as it dangled lightly before their hidden eyes. She looked like a master water skier Flowing behind them as they toddled Back and forth in front of her Along with the cement current Of the Metropolis. As I turned away from the cosmopolitan woman I looked at some delicately Embossed pottery in the window Of a shop with a black motif. Seven years has taken the Print scripted on onyx Visible from the curb Away from me. I walked into the storefront knowing that it was a bad idea. It was dark inside the shop In the mid afternoon light The clerks looked like clones of one another They were both dressed in jet black turtlenecks With small silver studs for earings. My brain took a double take seperating the one with breasts from the one without them. The dual sets of brown iris Frowned at me as I approached The curved polycarbon counter And their hands waved me away Without a word As if I were some sort of flea ridden nuisance The door closed hard but silently At my back and I was back in the jittering traffic Of elastic footsteps. Before getting caught up in the tide Of the river of knees and elbows I viewed the span in my field of view. There was a Jamaican of American descent That may have sprung up from a manhole cover Where the women with the dogs had floated by. I walked over to him Past the fenders of cars built in the seventies and eighties Frozen in time as if stuck in a still frame of moving film. The strap of the luggage was still heavy against my back. I opened my pack for him and Showed him my wares. He outsold me And I wound up with a plastic wrapped bundle Long brown sticks of cinnamon incense. I got away cheap. I didn't buy his Marley album because it didn't have "Buffalo Soldier" in the credits. The cart was a quick fold up table and while I was considering Whether or not he'd ever dealt Three Card Monte I discovered why he was really there. A quick flip of my left wrist indicated that it was five P.M. The pacers struck the grey stone and the asphault with a frenetic fury Winding among the traffic obstacles And ignoring the flashing signals That spotted through my lenses everywhere. I walked in the tangle for half a block Then ducked into a shop selling neckties and stereo components. A grey cardboard sign with medium sized marker print In carelessly formed characters indicated that the price on the ties was "Three for twenty dollars." I spotted one in a glass display case that I wanted. I flashed back while waiting for the salesman to a time five years earlier When a drama student girlfriend and I learned about the wonders of the neck tie While she taught me about the act of love and it's relationship to artistic license. We would have been discovered by my mother if she hadn't been a quick change practitioner. I talked to the olive skinned man when he approached Working consciously not to let the visions of the past escape my lips. The item I desired had a print of Dali's melting clocks dyed into its fibers. He casually informed me that The ties in the display case cost twenty-five dollars a piece. Our disagreement in price was understood And I casually found my way back to the street But not before I attempted to push the B52's and Talking Heads on him. It was almost a great afternoon for "Burning Down The House" with David Byrne. Trying to move that record drew me into thoughts of "Until The End of The World" As I washed fluidly back through traffic and down an alley a couple of doors down From that cascading toilet of Noir. The corridor opened on the right Into a market under a canvas tarp tent Where hustling vendors were selling Pirated copies of unreleased Hollywood Blockbusters taped on camcorders By devious videographers out to capture a few of the drifting Benjamins Awash in the current of Under the surface rough trade That couldn't exist on a level to any other cultural epicenter in the East. Maybe Chicago had a confidence game going But the operations of it's denizens were more visible And easier to successfully circumvent. A whiskery African near the Chicago Housing Authority Confronted me one morning As I had just crossed State Street to attend Economics class I was sporting a topcoat and boots And he stopped me asking for gasoline money Before the snapping retort I hoped to fire off He offered me his driver's liscense Out of curiosity I asked him to let me look at it. The face on the license was a Caucasian profile. The story got better when the line changed And suddenly the weather beaten photographic identification was his brother's. I handed it back to him and wordlessly proceeded across 33rd To the Escher concept building Where I carefully noted my Indian instructor's lecture. The net result of the exchange That I had with the quick talking Mexican Wearing a thick chain wrapped like a tow rope and a Boss T-shirt Was that he wanted half the product in my display for fifty dollars. I should have predicted that he would want to put the merchandise Into circulation himself. He gave me this "Yo no tengo lo mucho dinero" rap before I could reverse the pitch on him And I ended up mazing my way back to 42nd. When I came to the realization that I hadn't eaten since noon I blistered my drying eyes down the wide terrace of Broadway. Words sequenced along old theater buildings Formed two parallel lyrical structures of intentionally placed Public performance art. There were few strollers to click their heels against the humm of the motion Back on fifth. At some point in the space between The babblings of the signwork I managed to detect the scribbling of Chinese. I had to cross the street To narrow in on the menu written in English Taped to the window within a griddle of Kanji washed flyers In colors ranging from neon orange to pale mauve. I sat down and ordered Kung Po chicken From a waiter wearing an arm towel And let the cumbersome baggage of plastic and laser burned media Rest on the chair Fourty five degrees away. The dinner came with an egg roll hot and sour soup And my own tray of specially prepared tea With tiny cups lacking handles. The teapot was ornate With interwoven garden vines Flowering into petals that could only have bloomed In the climate of the opposite hemisphere of the globe. I thought back to renting Enter the Dragon Seeing Bruce Lee pose for combat among the mirrors And then free associated back to my first taste of Moo Goo Gai Pan Across from my old supervisor Rick Who hired me for a Christmas assault on the shoppers of Summit Park Mall. I helped him open the gate of Impulse World in the week preceeding Thanksgiving. He let me listen to tapes of the Smiths Information Society and The Cure Borrowed from Rob while my other friends From the 1990 class election campaign stormed in and out With newly purchased statues of Buddah And several finger excercise Balls. The Fascination Street of the Orient was alive in my hometown. Customers looking for more elegant acquisitions Sought out Kimonos Three foot wide animated collapsing fans And dressing blinds made of thin painted stone. I re-designed the Rad Sys dissipater software documents Before I was invited to work outside of the co-operative for him. My fingertips cruised through the menus of WordPerfect for Dos In a newly Moused world until I was virtually a professional at typesetting. When I left the tip I was generous Where else in the world can you be flooded By an ocean of good memories For four dollars and some change? I made it ten and the bell above the door signaled my exit. With a rejuvenated sense of Chi I worked beyond the magnetic poetry of the Broadway signs My foot falls finding turf all on their own as I changed streets And crossed the uninviting face of a brownstone. What appeared to be an old factory of unknown production capacity beckoned. Cutting through unlocked portal windowed wooden doors I broke the threshold of the complex and found my way forward To a freight elevator with diamonded collapsing brass rails And climbed aboard for a ride Not unlike one of my meddlings earlier in the day. I was hoping that this engagement would come to a similar result To that of my morning conquest Which had not been far from where I stood at that moment. To the general misfortune of the endeavors of humanistic reformers Who had recently made headlines With news of the calculating coldness of the Kathy Lee Gifford Advertising and Manufacturing establishment The members of which attempted to effectively put a stranglehold on market share For women's discount business attire Through a here to remain anonymous national retailer My target audience for the pre-prepared shtick of my present employer Evaporated as I assessed that these were not members Of the privileged blue collar class of low level middle management That I had had the good fortune of establishing For the most part A direct line of friendly convenience oriented one way communication That generally concluded with an educated consumers intent to purchase. These beaten brows were those of the victims Of the Ancient Art of War in the condition of the economics Of the modern capitalist mode of operation By stealthy less than aristocratic foreigners Making a business of the corruption of the frail American Dream That barely came to realization for a very few citizens of this country In the time pre-dating the Johnson administration. The Sweat Shops of the city on the island were real. Above the streets of Liberty The pale green copper heroine in all her glory stands with a torch To light the path to Freedom For both woman and man alike. With the dead Kennedy's she showed us the next step into orbit. Lunar Landers launched by the National Association of Space Administration. With Reagan she helped us realize the means To align the stars in our favor With sattelites and telescopes placed by Columbia and the Challenger. And with patience and progress She will lead us toward a recognition For the need for societal reformation. One day the bamboo cage Housing those Missing In Action From the front lines Of the healthy Educationally enabled Family construction force Will have it's flimsy frame unfastened. Entangled threads of stitch will cause the fracture of the needle of brute ignorance That binds the beauty of the imagination Of the creatively souled Chinese American To the fabric of the garments Of the globally dominated Superstore consumer. Bringing the political garblings Of my only partially aware mind To a close It can be concluded in abbreviated form That the Overseer sent me away From a battalion of potential music listeners With two simple words That need not be repeated for the simple sake of commonality. As he closed the wooden gate that divided me from the attention Of the poor spirits Of the class that goes without relief Within the living field of possibility That we like to reflect on As we fixate ourselves on Network Television programming From couches so easily earned With the stylistic business Of simple scientific methods learned During the teenage years That cannot be afforded As a result of their contracts with the doers of the clandestine evil Of the philosophically politically and socially challenged whose motivation lies with those residing in the valley below the river Styx. For the sake of clarification Greed. To bring the world up to date I am subject to the whims of greed at times. I find myself in a Casino on occasion In an attempt to pick up Lady Fortune And have her spin the revolving marble of her wheel To line my pockets with lint I see little curvature in the spines of the Master of the Roulette wheel He gets a full range of motion At his long digit coded tables in Ontario Accept my smile as a token Of appreciation to one particular Casino Associate From the recently opened port of Hong Kong Of whom I am particularly fond For his ability to light up the magic numbers That I randomly select. He knows that there is a place for him And the parents that gave him to Chance Before he has scholared his first academic achievement. I'm betting that he will find that place. I walked out of that Sweat Shop Believing that I had seen The only atrocity I would find in America And I made my way cautiously back to my car Where my passengers had been anxiously awaiting my arrival For well over an hour. We released the trunk And four doors closed on the compact black cherry sedan. Before Joe realized that the radio wasn't playing We were wedged in behind the freight Of the roughly two ton carriages of engineered steel Exiting by way of the waterfront at the base of the urban cityscape of New York. We saw our squeegee men and rose peddlers During the Tortoise's race back to the rails of the Washington To engage in Mass Transit And find our well deserved rest At a Jersey Motel off the Garden State Parkway But not before a quick stop in a small plaza For multidirectional product exchanges At a Dunkin Donuts That never closes. I think we may have dropped a Zeppelin or two on them And when we counted what was left There were a few copies of that whole "I want to be a part of it" compact disc that had gone missing somehow. Hey You never know. This Week's Lotto Jackpot is Seventy Five Million Dollars. Category:Catalog